There's this trope that music critics sometimes use, where they talk about a particular artist, or a particular record, "inventing the future" - or "inventing our future". There's a variant of it where the critic asserts that this particular artist or record invents a much later artist (or record).
I associate this trope with a particular blogger prone to this construction, this kind of assertion - and who particularly loved doing it in situations of maximum incongruity and over-reach (such-and-such a Bucks Fizz B-side "invents" Autechre - that kind of thing).
Here's an example of me using the trope in a 1995 column on Krautrock.
I don't imagine I was the first to use "invents" in this way in the world of music criticism. That said, I haven't come across earlier examples.
I'm wondering if I picked it up from reading Harold Bloom. It's a construction he uses often as part of his whole Anxiety of Influence view of literature as family romance: a net of filial links that bind poet to ancestor-poet, and from which the later poet struggles to break loose (adding parricide to the filial filigree) . So he often write about how a certain precursor poet "invents" a later poet.
But Bloom also loved to say, repeatedly, that Shakespeare invents us - meaning Western consciousness, modernity, our conception of the psyche and human motivation etc. (More pointedly still, he asserts that Shakespeare "invents" Freud - massively preempts him - talk about family romance).
"Inventing the future" also has a life, as you'd imagine, in the world of writing about science and technology, futurology.
Here's an example I found from 1992 - "Japan Invents the Future".
Back to my Krautrock column - another notable thing about it is the piss that the Melody Maker reviews editor is taking out of me for my relentless vanguardism.
German progressive rock was somewhat more inclined to minimalism and electronic experimentation than its British equivalent, yes.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the end results were always quite as good, though.
When considering Kraftwerk, one ought to differentiate between Kraftwerk the music in and of itself, Kraftwerk the evolving concept and brand, and Kraftwerk as an influence on other music.
ReplyDeleteKraftwerk as an influence is undeniable and pretty straightforward. But allow me to blaspheme in church by stating that Kraftwerk the Music suffered a great deal due to the increasingly constricting Kraftwerk Concept and Brand. It became a rigid straight jacket of endless self-parody from which they could not free themselves. Apart from 2 or 3 songs from their post-Autobahn period (in particular Ohm Sweet Ohm), I will always prefer go back to the flute era Kraftwerk, for precisely that which Ralf & co. are so embarrassed about.
Nothing dates quicker than futurism.
I am curious as to who the particular blogger is that you refer to. I'm wracking my brain but I can't seem to come up with a name. Unless it's somebody I've not encountered. Intrigued.
ReplyDelete